How Website Owners Can Avoid Common Performance Mistakes

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, website performance is directly tied to user satisfaction, search engine visibility, and ultimately, business success. Even the most visually stunning websites can fail if they load slowly, glitch during use, or provide a frustrating user experience. For site owners aiming to grow traffic, improve SEO rankings, and convert visitors into customers, avoiding common performance mistakes is no longer optional — it’s essential. This post explores practical, actionable steps to help website owners ensure their sites are fast, efficient, and optimized for both users and search engines.

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Search engine ranking is as crucial as ever in 2025

Fewer than half (40%) of websites rank on the first page in SERPs. New sites give the top-ranking page in SERPs another 5% — 14.5% do-follow backlinks, and almost all (96%) of top-10 ranking websites on Google have more than 1,000 unique domain links. Against this backdrop, it’s no wonder revenue from local search advertising keeps growing. It increased from $118.8 billion in 2023 to more than $175 billion in 2024.

The most accurate measure of user experience

The most important SEO ranking factors are page experience and page speed, and Core Web Vitals are the most accurate measure of user experience. This is a set of three metrics: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). CLS is the extent to which a page’s layout moves around unpredictably while the page loads. LCP is the period it takes for the page’s biggest content element to load, and INP is the longest delay between a user’s first interaction with a page and the page’s visual response. Improving these metrics can boost SEO results and provide a better overall user experience.

Avoid web fonts, use system ones

Website owners favor web fonts because they can give their websites a unique appearance. However, they increase load time. You can reduce this effect by reserving them for special elements or headings.

For body text, sticking to system fonts like Helvetica or Arial is best because they load instantly. They are preinstalled on users’ devices.

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Choosing the right image format

Use JPEG for photos and illustrations and PNG for icons, logos, or other images that require transparent backgrounds. Opt for WebP or another modern image format when possible because they maintain quality while offering a smaller file size.

TinyPNG or another compression tool will reduce file size but preserve image quality.

Choose web hosting wisely

It’s essential to choose a WordPress hosting provider that prioritizes speed. The host should offer a free CDN, object caching, and support for the latest PHP and MySQL versions. These features boost speed and improve SERP rankings. They should also offer a free SSL certificate, malware scanning, WAF, and website backup and restoration.

Reduce HTTP requests

When the user’s browser needs to load a file, it sends the server an HTTP request. The number of requests is inversely proportional to page load speed because each request goes back and forth between the server and the browser. To see the number of HTTP requests for a page on Chrome, open the respective page, right-click, and choose “Inspect,” then go to the “Network” tab.

After reloading the page, you’ll be shown the requests and data on each one. The total number of requests is in the bottom left-hand corner. To reduce the number of requests, use fewer plugins and remove unused CSS files and unnecessary tracking scripts, advertising pixels, or analytics tools. The tool UnCSS eliminates needless CSS from your stylesheets.

Users form an opinion of your site faster than you think

The average website visitor takes just 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about the site. More than half (53%) of visitors will navigate away from a mobile site that takes over three seconds to load, and 88% of users are unlikely to return after a negative experience on a site. Almost 97% of homepages have accessibility issues, and a site error or crash will cause 17% of US website visitors to abandon their orders, according to a 2024 survey. In light of these facts, avoiding common performance mistakes is more important than ever.

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In Summary

Optimizing a website’s performance goes beyond aesthetics — it’s about delivering a seamless, fast, and reliable experience that keeps users engaged and search engines happy. By addressing factors like image formats, font choices, hosting quality, and reducing HTTP requests, site owners can dramatically enhance both user satisfaction and SEO outcomes. Staying informed and proactive about these common pitfalls ensures your website doesn’t just look good, but performs at its best — every time someone visits.